Pauline had double vision. Speeding up the turnpike toward Miami, seeing two eighteen-wheelers where there was one, two motorcycles, two bread trucks. Two exit signs flashing past.
It took her three tries before she punched the correct numbers.
“Need to speak to Hadley.”
Two red Corvettes blew by her on the left.
“He’s in a meeting,” his secretary said. Someone new Pauline didn’t know. They were always rotating in and out.
“Get him out of the meeting. This is urgent.”
“I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Caufield, Pauline Caufield.”
“One moment please.”
Pauline watched two big white birds sail across the highway. Two suns burning in the sky, two roads running parallel before her. The blood had stopped seeping. But a bell was ringing in her throat, and something tasted rotten at the back of her mouth.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Caufield. He can’t come to the phone. It’s an important meeting.”
“It’s Pauline Caufield. Did you tell him that?”
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
“Well, go tell him again. This is the highest priority.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, Director Waters said he doesn’t know a Pauline Caufield.”
At thirteen she learned to pleasure herself. In her dreary, motherless house she lay beneath the sheet and comforter, hand stroking thighs. A sweet relief from the pressure knotted inside. Something new, something exciting. Something all her own.
Twice that year her daddy swung open her bedroom door and caught her in the act. Shamed her, gave her prayers to say, made her read the Testament, pointing to the terrible punishments parents were sometimes required to make. Abraham and his boy Isaac. Onan, who so displeased the Lord for spilling his seed, he was slain.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
The third and final time he caught her she was fourteen. As she was rising to the crucial moment, her guilt-loving father pushed open her door as if he’d been standing in the hall waiting for her moans, the squeak of mattress springs; her father waiting outside, ready with his punishment.
He strode across the room, yanked back her sheets. He looked down at her hand tucked between her white thighs.
I warned you about this.
I warned you, yet you continue to defy me. This lewd conduct. It will spoil you for marriage. No man will have you. I will not allow this in my house. I have warned you. Over and over I have warned.
There was a glass specimen jar in his hand. He held it out, unscrewed the lid, tipped it. Inside was a papery nest crawling with wasps, frantic to defend their broken hive.
No, she said. I won’t do it again. I promise. I’ll stop. I will.
You promised before. I no longer trust your word.
He dropped the hive onto her loins. The stinging hive.
The wasps, the wasps, the stinging hive.
Years passed and she grew wanton. More bold and daddy-hating. Eighteen, nineteen, moving quickly from boys to men and more men. Bringing his worst fears to life. Dangerous men, powerful men, some more powerful than he. Inviting them in, taking all they had. Draining them dry, casting them aside.
Until that one man, that thrilling man. A man of valor. She fell for him, fell and fell so hard. His slinky body, his insolent smile, long lashes. Sensual macho lips. A genuine man, nothing like the others. A man of action and daring.
She made her way into his bed, oh God, his bed, his body. Those hours in his arms, his breath in her ear. His ferocity, his yearning.
But no. She can’t have him. Beautiful man. Can’t have, can’t have. The wife and children called him home. And that’s final. Go away, leave me alone. Forget I exist.
With her eyes shut, she placed on her tongue the dry wafer of the past, sipped from the goblet of memory. Reliving once more that murderous night, the man who died, and that sweet girl child. The wasps, the stinging wasps seeking her out, circling her head like a venomous halo, they buzzed round her brain, swarming and swarming to return to their hive, crazy to return to their broken hive. Their broken, broken hive.
Hadley Waters couldn’t do that. Could he?
Pauline Caufield was a government employee with health insurance, a pension plan, nearly forty years of service. Waters couldn’t erase all that, couldn’t delete her Social Security number, expunge her from the system. No way in hell. People knew her, lots of people. She had a history. She had a penthouse office in one of Miami’s finest office buildings, a network of agents under her command. She had bank accounts, a Florida driver’s license, a passport, a deed to her house in Belle Meade, credit cards, a leased vehicle. There was no way she could simply poof and be gone. No way in hell.
Then again, she knew that wasn’t exactly true.
She’d done as much herself. Agents in the field exposed who’d had to disappear. She’d overseen the work from Langley tech support. Watching them type and delete. Erase the flickering electronic codes that held the data that gave heft to human identity. A day or two was all it took, tracking down every trace, every footprint in the sand.
Poof.
And Hadley S. Waters had access to the best tech masters in the field. Better than anyone Pauline used. He might have already done it. He might have made Pauline Caufield and all her many accomplishments evaporate.
When making an agent vanish, removing the data was step one. It was step two that chilled her. Carting off the furniture from her house, the books on her shelves, the photographs. Removing the files from her computer, the computer itself, the record albums, the letters. Emptying drawers, stripping clothes from the closets, checkbooks and old tax statements from the desk, the pots and pans, everything down to the last spoon and paper clip.
Removing all physical presence of Pauline. Making her disappear.